Jun 8, 2008

9/11 conspiracy theorists in retreat (avec assorted musings)

An interesting article from The Skeptic about how the ranks of 9/11 Truthers are thinning out:

Today, the 9/11 conspiracy movement is a shell of what it once was. The website masquerading as an academic journal, Journal of 9/11 Studies, has dropped from a high of six or seven articles published per issue to one....The introduction to the main hub of 9/11 denier activity, 911truth.org, welcomes its visitors with a plea that announces, “we’ve cut to the bare bones, but are still far short of our basic budget needs.” Prominent “truthers” like Mark Dice, Dylan Avery, Jimmy Walter... and Kevin Ryan have dropped into obscurity.

I can't say I'm terribly upset by all this. The 9/11 Truthers were probably the most useless and pointless fringe group in the modern world, whose only real purpose seemed to be deflecting the very real criticisms of Bush's leadership and foreign policy, by retreating into a fantasy world of unprovable and outlandish accusations.

The areas of real interest - how badly was the intelligence managed by the executive and various security organizations before 9/11, has faded into obscurity as people have debated ludicrous theories involving missiles, gold, Reichstag Fire scenarios, entirely fictitious terrorist organizations and insurance scams.

I also found the organic growth of a sceptical counter-movement to oppose the Truther's very interesting:

Staking their fortunes almost solely on Internet-based content may have been the 9/11 deniers’ biggest mistake. What seems like a perfect place for pseudoscience — the Internet is un-edited, without fact-checkers or minimum publishing standards of any kind — also became a perfect place for a rapid-response system of blogs and forums to fight back. Drawing on the freely available technical information from the NIST, FEMA, and academic journals which most colleges let their students access for free, skeptical sites like ScrewLooseChange.blogspot.com and debunking911.com are able to defuse 9/11 denier claims as they arise.

Web 2.0 may be useful after all! Now we need to get this going on the media a little more...maybe even the government as well. Government 2.0 perhaps. Its not very catchy, but instant feedback could be interesting.

This also may help explain the failure of US Presidential Candidate Ron Paul, whose internet support was huge, and yet offline was not worth mentioning. Barack Obama, by contrast, has a powerful grass-roots campaign online, but has anchored himself fairly strongly offline too. In Ron Paul's case, the online communities filtered through his policies and discovered many of the key flaws in them....by contrast, the Obama-supporting web in many cases has been used to debunk several myths and nasty rumours about him. Ron Paul's online support didn't translate into offline success and collapsed....Obama by contrast carried his offline success online and it helped him. A parable here, maybe.

Anyway, back on topic. Recently, I read an interesting little document that goes by the name of "The Creators of Loose Change Speak" by Mark Roberts. Its an interesting 98 page long document which shows the general contempt the people behind Loose Change seem to have for...well, everyone really. It pretty much convinced me that one reason behind the attempted spread of 9/11 conspiracy theories, especially this case, was the financial incentive. Because I am a kind and forgiving blogger (and more importantly, I forgot where it was hosted) I have uploaded this PDF document to Rapidshare, should anyone want to read it. Just follow the link.

Anyway, I think that's all I have to say on the topic for now. Cheers to Blairwatch for the link.

Or I've already done my research, decided that even if the variety of conspiracy theories beyond LIHOP is in fact true, its unverifiable and unfalsifiable information that is provided and that such a powerful and entrenched conspiracy wont be bought down by waving around placards and posting nonsense on the internet.

On the other hand, there is lots of evidence for the Bush administration illegally spying on the American people, breaking its own and international law, engaging in war crimes and other such delicious bits of information, all of which could bring the administraton down if the American political process were not comprised of spineless arsekissers.

Your focus makes as little strategic sense as it does factual sense. Unless you're just content to be nothing more than a lunatic fringe bitching about "the man" while never achieving anything.

Look at the evidence and you will see that only Bush's government could have arranged the controlled demolition of those three buildings, the hitting of the Pentagon with a missile, the subsequent conspiracy of silence and the misinformation fed through a compliant media, etc., etc. Of course, the general American populace is too stupid to see what's going on. We're witnessing the end of America, some say, right on plan.

I'm being serious here, by the way, just so you know. You are asserting that the Bush administration (or factions within) placed explosives in the WTC.

Why did they need to do that? Why was it so necessary for the towers to come down? Would the shock of two planes hitting the towers not be sufficient enough to pass the laws they wanted and wage the wars they wanted? What made it worth the risk of planting explosives that could not be achieved by the planes themselves?

This is another problem I have with the 9/11 Truth movement - a lack of internal consistency in your version of events.

It's the same tired line over and over again... "look at the evidence!", despite the fact that you had already -clearly- stated that you had.

Apparently you have only looked at the evidence if you suddenly agree with their lunatic theories (all the passengers on the planes were 'in on it' and living somewhere in hiding now... I'm sure a lot of the victims families would be thrilled with that idea)...

I happen to be enjoy conspiracies, but 9/11ers seem to be so black and white about everything I am forced to question what their real motives are. It sometimes seems like they are in it for the entertainment value. The world ONLY makes sense if they can decide who is behind it all.